South Sudan rejects UN appeal to withdraw troops
“I told him you do not need to order me because I am not under your command. I am a head of state accountable to my people and do not have to be ordered by someone I do not fall under his direct command. I will not withdraw the troops,” President kiir Mayardit to the UN Chief, Bank Ki Moon.
SPLA spokesman Col. Philip Aguer said that Antonov aircraft belonging to Sudan dropped five bombs on a bridge linking Bentiu to neighboring Rubkotna. The two towns comprise Unity State’s most populated area.
“This is an indiscriminate bombing,” and according to initial reports one civilian was killed and four were wounded in the attack, Aguer said.
President Kiir said he had received numerous appeals from the international community to withdraw SPLA troops from the disputed territory, including a call from United Nation’s Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon.
“Last night I never slept because of the telephone calls,” he said. “Those who have been calling me — starting with the U.N. secretary-general yesterday — he gave me an order that I’m ordering you to immediately withdraw from Heglig. I said I’m not under your command,” Kiir said.
The military advance by South Sudan into territory it claims but which is internationally recognized as Sudan’s brought swift condemnation from the United States and Britain. Both nations, along with the U.N. Security Council, urged South Sudan to withdraw from the town of Heglig and condemned the bombings of South Sudan territory by Sudan.
Kiir said he also urged the U.N. secretary-general to re-engage Sudan on the disputed territory of Abyei.
“We withdrew from Abyei. Bashir occupied Abyei and is still there up to today,” Kiir said. “I told the secretary-general that if you are not moving out with this force of Bashir, we are going to reconsider our position and we are going back to Abyei.”
Fighting erupted in Abyei between Sudan and South Sudan May of last year, just months before South Sudan formally declared independence from Sudan.
The region was to hold a referendum in January to decide whether it stays with Sudan or joins a newly independent South. But the vote was postponed indefinitely amid disagreements over who would be eligible to vote.
The fighting has displaced more than 100,000 people, most of whom are still waiting to return.
The continued clashes have dimmed hopes for a resolution between the two countries on a host of issues left over from their July split, including oil-sharing, citizenship issues and the demarcation of the border.
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President Salva Kiir dismisses secretary-general’s request to withdraw from Heglig and says his forces may enter Abyei.
12 Apr 2012
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| South Sudan’s president has said his nation will not withdraw its troops that this week entered a disputed border region with Sudan.Salva Kiir, president of South Sudan, spoke to parliament on Thursday in the midst of escalating clashes along the border with Sudan and the bombing of a bridge outside Beintu in which one soldier was killed and two others injured.”[The UN Secretary General] gave me an order,” Kir said. “He said I order you to immediately withdraw from Heglig. I said I’m not under your command.”Kir also said the country’s military would also re-enter another disputed area, Abyei, currently occupied by Sudan if the UN does not urge Sudan to withdraw.Al Jazeera’s Nazanine Moshiri, reporting from Juba, the South Sudanese capital, said that South Sudan wants an international mechanism in place before they withdraw from Heglig.
“The president of South Sudan is not going to budge on this,” she said. “If bombardment continues, the South Sudanese will go into the tow on Abyei, and this is of extreme concern to the international community.” On Wednesday, troops from South Sudan captured the oil-rich border town of Heglig that is claimed by Sudan, whose troops withdrew under the onslaught. Kiir said that South Sudan’s military forces, the SPLA, had also advanced past Heglig after occupying it. “They pursued them up to the so-called Heglig. But these forces did not stop in Heglig, there was not fighting in Heglig,” he said. Sudanese warplanes attacked a major South Sudanese town at dawn, bombing the capital of the oil-producing Unity border state, according to South Sudan officials. The aircraft targeted a strategic bridge on the Rubkhona airstrip just outside Beintu town close to a UN compound, which lies about 60km from the frontier as clashes between the recently separated nations continued for a third day. One soldier was killed and two others injured in the attack. ‘Choosing the path of war’ Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir accused South Sudan of “choosing the path of war,” following days of intensifying clashes on their shared border. “Our brothers in South Sudan have chosen the path of war, implementing plans dictated by foreign parties who supported them during the civil war,” Bashir told reporters, referring to decades of conflict before the South’s independence last year. “War is not in the interest of either South Sudan or Sudan but, unfortunately, our brothers in the South are thinking neither of the interests of Sudan or of South Sudan.” The military advances by South Sudan and the Sudanese air raids brought condemnation from the UN Security Council as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on both sides to withdraw from the other side’s territory and said he was “alarmed by the escalation in fighting”. Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, Sudan’s ambassador to the UN, said he had filed a complaint to the Security Council condemning the “heinous attack” on Heglig. “We will decide to retaliate, and retaliate severely, deep inside South Sudan if the Security Council doesn’t address the situation”, Ali Osman told reporters. A statement on Khartoum’s official SUNA news agency warned of “destruction” in South Sudan. Focal point of fighting Heglig lies along the disputed border between the two African nations and has been the focal point of nearly two weeks of clashes between their armies, which have prompted the collapse of African Union-mediated talks. The region is home to oil fields that account for about half of Sudan’s oil production, a critical source of income for the country’s flagging economy. The two rivals fought a civil war that lasted decades, and never reached a deal to share the region’s oil resources or delineate their exact border during negotiations which led to South Sudan’s cessation last year. A 2009 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague placed Heglig in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan region. But South Sudan has disputed the ruling, asserting that the region is in South Sudan’s Unity State. South Sudan’s army said it moved into Heglig on Tuesday after repelling an attack launched by Sudanese Armed Forces against a position near the border town of Teshwin. Bashir was scheduled to visit South Sudan for a summit April 3, but the talks were scrapped in the wake of the clashes. Barack Obama, the US president, earlier this month called Kiir to ensure that South Sudan’s military exercised maximum restraint and was not involved in, or supporting, fighting along the border. In a statement, the African Union called upon both countries to resolve all outstanding issues “in a peaceful way in accordance with the overriding principle of establishing two viable states in Sudan and South Sudan”. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/04/2012412141645572913.html |
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